“I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh,” Bungie said a good long while ago. “I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the world goes dim and cold. I am hero.”

It didn’t take long for things to click back into place when I loaded into the Edge of Fate campaign. I’m a nostalgic person, you see, and so my first choice of armament wasn’t a fancy new Exotic or a sleek new Legendary. Nope. It was my Rampage/Dragonfly Ringing Nail back from the Season of the Forge. I cannot put into words how thrilling it felt to see it pull its weight – underpowered and outdated though it may be – in the Legendary campaign of the new Destiny 2 DLC.

I’ll be honest with you: I’m having fun in Edge of Fate. It’s a genuinely good content drop loaded with quality-of-life boons that should’ve been in Destiny 2 for years at this point, and its biggest problem in my view is the fact that it might’ve changed too much for the community to bear at this point. It’s tough. Most of us straight-up left after the banger that was the Final Shape DLC, and that’s at least partially because Bungie kinda-sorta marketed it as the grand finale of the story.

Yet, the money printer needs to keep going, and I’ll circle back to that in due time. And so here we are, at the dawn of a new era for Destiny 2. Some might feel that we’re now at the precipice of Destiny 3 with how much has changed, but I don’t think enough has happened to warrant this line of thinking. For one, I do believe we’d have been better off with a full-blooded Destiny 3 at this point, but it is what it is.

Here’s the gist of what I think about The Edge of Fate, then: it’s an excellent campaign both in regard to its gameplay and its story. It’s also loaded with live-service junk that seems to be driving the game back from the heights of its Final Shape era, at least from what my limited experience has shown so far.

And hey, starting from the narrative itself, I’ve got absolutely nothing but praise to throw Bungie’s way. It’s strange, but I genuinely believe the campaign itself – the missions and the story reveals, specifically – is some of the best we’ve gotten yet. That’s because it’s absolutely brimming with frankly monumental lore reveals that I’m thrilled to report fit perfectly into the grander scheme of Destiny. The writers have outdone themselves this time around, and though there are several crucial new story beats for the community and Bungie writers to explore in the coming months and years, the Big One concerning the Kepler black hole is jaw-dropping. In my book, it goes toe-to-toe with the grand Pyramid reveal from the Shadowkeep DLC, and that’s an all-time-great twist no matter who you ask.

I’m trying hard to skirt around spoilers here, as you’ve surely noticed, but the crucial bit is that I don’t think anyone interested in Destiny lore is going to be disappointed here. We get to interact with Aionian NPCs, spend a bunch of time with Lodi, and learn loads about Ikora and the former Emissary of the Nine. Believe it or not, we also finally learn what the Drifter’s Mote Load was all about! It’s heart-breaking stuff, but you’ll see for yourself what’s up with that. I was really worried Destiny was going to lose its Lovecraftian and Cosmic Horror influences following the Witness’s demise, but that’s not the case at all, and I believe the franchise is going to veer into its weirdest period yet with this new narrative.

The campaign’s fancy new gameplay gimmicks won’t be to everyone’s tastes, I don’t think, but they’re neat enough in their own right. They’re a tad overplayed in the main campaign missions, and it’s not hard to get annoyed with how often Matterspark, in particular, comes up in fights and puzzles. Yet, it’s a decent change of pace that could truly come into its own in endgame-tier content, like Raids and Dungeons. Overall, I’m not sold on them yet, but I am keen on seeing what Bungie might do with them.

On that note, Edge of Fate’s campaign isn’t perfect. It’s the gimmicks that kind of break it, actually, depending on how you look at it. All three major new abilities are essentially Kepler exclusives, which means they simply do not apply to any other evergreen content. Or to the vast majority of Destiny 2’s legacy content roster, for that matter. And while they do make for an interesting twist compared to all the other, prior Destiny 2 campaigns, I’ve got to admit that developing Kepler as a single-Fireteam, Sparrow-free location has made me scratch my head. Crucially, Kepler doesn’t feel like a full, bespoke Patrol zone. It kind of isn’t. If this is what Bungie’s new Metroidvania angle is going to be, I’d recommend a pivot.

A large number of Destiny players aren’t in it for the campaign itself, though. On that front, the core gameplay loop is as strong as it’s ever been. Edge of Fate effectively simplifies, if not outright resets Destiny 2’s previously bloated power curve. This isn’t a total win, though, because the new power grind is extremely reminiscent of how the original Destiny felt before its DLCs started pouring in. At least, that’s how I subjectively feel about it, but note that I haven’t yet felt the need or desire to really start ramping up my overall power level. It’s going to take time before the new meta truly comes into its own.

I’m also not yet 100% on board with the new Portal feature. For one, I’m a Director kind of guy, and seeing it literally desaturated and loaded with functionally irrelevant content (progression-wise) just chafes me the wrong way. Portal, on the other hand, is obviously supposed to be Bungie’s replacement for the Director, and it simply lacks the flair and zest of the older system. It’s functional, at least, and will quickly and easily funnel you exactly into the kind of content you might want to play.

Aside from subjective takes on new gameplay features, there are also obvious, glaring problems with Edge of Fate to discuss. Even though my trusty Ringing Nail still kicks alien butt left and right, it’s now severely out-of-date by virtually every metric: Bungie has once again soft-sunset almost all the gear we had stockpiled in our Vaults. Armor 3.0 comes with a whole new suite of stats to figure out and hone in on, and the weapons’ new Tier system rhymes with the transition from Destiny 2 Year 1 guns to Destiny 2: Forsaken-era reworks.

Mechanically, the “vibe” I’m getting post-Edge of Fate is that Bungie really is making Destiny 2 grindier than it’s been over the past couple of years. The community is already discussing how the developer is effectively dismantling the legacy of Joe Blackburn, and I can’t say that the cynic in me disagrees with that assessment. I’m concerned, honestly.

After you complete Edge of Fate’s excellent main campaign your next goal is going to be to ramp up your Power Level and prepare for the endgame, and my understanding is that the game basically wants you to replay the campaign, verbatim. Except you now do it with the Heroic modifier active, which downclocks your power level, and then you do the same thing yet once more at Mythic, scuttles your power level further still. It gets tiring, fast, and what’s an excellent piece of content at regular Legendary difficulty scaling turns into a horrific annoyance by the time you’ve gotten to Mythic.

If you decide to stick around for seasonal content, prepare for a heaping spoonful of grind as well. You only have 60 days to pummel through 110 total levels of seasonal ranking if you want to get all of the gear and cosmetics contained within. I don’t have it in me to play Destiny 2 that much, frankly, and I get the sense that most people don’t, either.

There’s more stuff that rubs me the wrong way, of course. Pathfinder, for one, is more-or-less gone from the broader gameplay progression sandbox, and you can now only find it attached to the Final Shape‘s DLC destination, where it dispenses out-of-date loot. The entire system has been scrapped in lieu of… I’m not sure what. And if you were a fan of weapon crafting, you can forget about it from Edge of Fate onwards. In many ways, this stage of Destiny 2‘s development is a pointed regression to mechanics that were tested and proven impalatable in the long run, but I expect that Bungie wishes to see a higher player retention than it got with the Final Shape DLC.

Personally, I don’t see this happening. Destiny 2 is now ostensibly a more hostile and complicated game than it was pre-Edge of Fate, and this is purely because there’s a pointed effort being made to funnel players into excessive grinding and/or spending money on cosmetics. Let me reiterate once again that, once again, Bungie has delivered a stellar game. It’s its monetization and the background bits and bobs that may leave a sour taste in your mouth over a longer period of time.

I didn’t throw in that classic Marathon quote at the start of the review for no good reason. It’s entirely possible to enjoy Destiny 2: Edge of Fate for what it is, and leave it at that. There’s a lot of stuff to appreciate here, and having recently played Doom: The Dark Ages, this new Bungie campaign honestly isn’t dramatically far behind id Software’s latest and greatest. They’re both good shooters. You will feel like Beowulf as the truth behind the Nine is revealed. As for what happens after… well, that’s something else entirely.

Obviously I can’t cover every single aspect and feature of Edge of Fate in a simple review, but I will say that I didn’t have the opportunity to finish the new Raid, The Desert Perpetual. It’s an absolutely excellent piece of content, though, and I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if this was considered to be one of the all-time-greats over time. How many people are going to be jumping in to play it, though?

For what it’s worth, I do not see myself returning to Destiny 2 after finishing the Edge of Fate campaign. The content on show is great, the story as it unravels is the stuff nightmares are made of, and Bungie is doing some things that should’ve been done ages ago. Yet, it’s painfully obvious that the studio hasn’t moved on from its ‘reinventing the wheel’ phase at all, and we’re once again getting reworks of weapons, armor systems, and progression features with no plan to maintain them over a long period of time. The world’s gone dim and cold, and the hero is old and tired.